Is Kohl's Systemically Overcharging Customers?

By consumeristcareyMay 3, 2009

Don’t walk out of Kohl’s without first double-checking your receipt. The store apparently has a penchant for overcharging customers, according to the Sacramento County Department of Weights and Measures, which fined the chain $2,000 for repeatedly failing surprise inspections. CBS sent an enterprising reporter to see how long it would take for them to uncover a pricing discrepancy of their own. Almost immediately, they found a woman who was charged $64.99 for a pair of shoes marked $59.99.

“It tells me, they don’t care,” David Lazier of Sacramento County Weights and Measures told Kurtis. He says it shows, “their business model, their business practice (that) sloppiness is okay”.

The Kohl’s store in Elk Grove failed it’s September inspection. The report shows inspectors were charged $44.99 for a set of sheets supposed to be $22.49. It also shows a jacket on sale for $50, rung up $69.99. Inspections reports reveal the Kohl’s in Natomas has also overcharged customers, as did a location in Modesto. The store on Antelope Boulevard in Sacramento County failed two inspections in 2008.

The first person Kurtis could find outside the Kohl’s Antelope store said she’s been overcharged. “It’s happened a lot, at least five or six times”.

Sacramento County fined Kohl’s stores more than $2000 last year, but Lazier says the department store hasn’t fixed the problem.

“The information they gave us is we were too busy to get around to get that taken care of, well that’s not the consumers problem, that’s store management problem,” Lazier told Kurtis.

The Sacramento District Attorney is investigating the pricing discrepancies and could haul Kohl’s into court, where the fines reach far higher than $2,000.